Pre- and post-ictal brain activity characterization

using combined source decomposition and

connectivity estimation in epileptic children
Ivan Kotiuchyi
Biomedical Engineering Department,
National Technical University of Ukraine
”Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”,
R&D Engineering, Ciklum,
Kyiv, Ukraine
ivanellokot@gmail.com
Ivan Seleznov, Anton Popov Volodymyr Kharytonov
Electronic Engineering Department, TMO ”Psychiatry”
National Technical University of Ukraine Kyiv, Ukraine
”Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, vkharytonov69@gmail.com
R&D Engineering, Ciklum,
Kyiv, Ukraine
ivan.seleznov1@gmail.com
popov.kpi@gmail.com

Abstract—In this research, the study of the coherence between
common spatial patterns between EEG segments well before the
seizure, pre-ictal and post-ictal was performed. EEG recordings
were obtained from 4 subjects with generalized seizures and 12
subjects with focal epilepsy seizures. According to the obtained
results of functional connectivity, it was found that the class of
EEG may be predicted from another class with the time delay of
256 ms. Our results, also show that coherence between patterns
also differs between two types of seizures. In the case of focal
seizures, the coherence, in general, has the same values for brain
activity during baseline and pre-ictal periods. For generalized
seizures, the coherence during the pre-ictal period is larger than
during the baseline, for all patterns in the whole frequency range.
is a need to create new methods for evaluating functional
and effective relationships during epilepsy. This connectivity
characterization may be obtained through the construction of
autoregressive mathematical models of brain activity signals,
such as EEG, and applying signal processing tools in a spectral
domain [4], [13]–[15]. In this work, we study the coherence
between the common spatial patterns for background EEG
and EEG for pre- and post-ictal intervals. This is applied to
the EEG from epileptic children with generalized and focal
seizures.

Index Terms—epilepsy, epileptic seizures, EEG, brain connec- II. S OURCE DECOMPOSITION AND CONNECTIVITY
tivity, common spatial patterns, VAR model, EEG, ICA CHARACTERIZATION

I. I NTRODUCTION A. Common Spatial Patterns

The human brain is a large-scale network in which activ-
ity depends on interactions between different brain regions.
Characterization of brain electrical activity, particularly syn-
chronous functional and causal effective connectivity between
brain regions, is used to determine if they are altered in a wide
variety of neurological disorders, such as epilepsy [1], [2].
Functional connectivity is defined as the temporal correla-
tion between spatially remote brain regions. In turn, effective
connectivity is defined as the influence of one brain region
exerts over another. Overall connectivity describes how brain
regions interact and engage each other [1], [3]. Research of
studies involving epilepsy and other physiologic states con-
nectivity estimation was conducted. Most of studies designed
to a better understanding of the occurrence and spreading of
an epileptic seizure and estimation of brain activity during
different brain strains [4], [5], [8]–[11].
Traditional approaches to the study of functional brain
connectivity in epilepsy do not fully solve the problem
of unification and standardization of views concerning the
epileptic seizures occurrence and spreading. Therefore, there
To obtain the patterns to which the EEG can be decom-
posed, the Common Spatial Patterns (CSP) [5], [16]–[18]
were extracted. CSP is basically the filter algorithm which
provides us with new decomposed features calculated from
covariance matrices of raw EEG signals, compared for fol-
lowing classes: ”baseline”–”pre-ictal”, ”baseline”–”post-ictal”,
”pre-ictal”–”post-ictal”. CSP provides an appropriate spatial
resolution of our high-dimensional EEG data. We reduce data
dimensionality by linear transformation and separating EEG
signals into additive subcomponents which hold the most dis-
criminative information for each of the compared classes. The
duration of each class EEG data windows was set to 5 seconds
and in each class, we suppose to observe different sources’
activations. During the initiation phase of our research, we set
the number of dimensionality reduced features extracted from
raw EEG signals with the CSP algorithm to 4. Each of these
4 spatial patterns represents the activity of cortical sources.
We compare the activity between sources of the first EEG
signal class and activity extracted from the same sources of
the corresponding second compared class.
B. MVAR modeling
The next step after applying CSP algorithm is to obtain
an MVAR model. We assessed the quality of MVAR models
by using the Schwartz–Bayes information criterion [19]. The
MVAR model order was set to 64. As far as the sampling
frequency of our signals is 250 Hz, this implies that MVAR
modeling of common spatial patterns is performing taking into
account the information which they contain for the time delay
of 256 ms.
C. Decomposing the VAR model residuals with ICA
We fit the MVAR models to the EEG data by decomposing
models’ residuals with ICA method and iteratively correcting
models’ coefficients. After performing the ICA method we
get the estimated EEG source activities and obtain functional
connectivity from various spectral measures between spatial
sources.
D. MVAR model residuals’ whiteness testing
Additionally, the residuals were also tested for whiteness
using the Li-McLeod as Portmanteau test statistic Q [5], [20].
For obtained models in the present study this test shows no
correlated residuals and the hypothesis of white residuals was
not rejected. This indicates that the VAR model describes the
data properly.
To summarize, we performed blind source decomposition,
connectivity estimation and visualization of results using SCoT
– a Python toolbox for EEG source connectivity estimation,
described in [5], [13].
III. EEG DATA
EEG was recorded from 4 subjects with generalized seizures
and 12 subjects with focal epilepsy. In the focal group, some
subjects had focal initiation of a seizure but focal initiation
of pathologic activity. The information about participating
subjects is given in Table 1.
TABLE I
I NFORMATION ABOUT PARTICIPATING SUBJECTS
Female Male: Number
Group number, number) of
(age range) (age range) seizures
Generalized 4, (2.8–15 y.o.) 0 18
Focal 4, (3–25 y.o.) 8, (0.5–9 y.o.) 45
In the present study, the two-steps approach to connectivity
analysis is adopted [5]: sources of activity and connectivity
itself are estimated from the different data segments. Hence,
we divided the multichannel EEG into three segments:
• Baseline, starting 35 sec before a seizure and ending 30
sec before a seizure.
• Pre-ictal, staring 5 sec before a seizure and ending at the
moment of seizure start.
• Postictal, starting immediately after seizure stop and
ending after 5 sec.
Fig. 1. ”Baseline”–”pre-ictal” coherence between spatial patterns for gener-
alized seizures.
EEG in each segment is considered stationary, leading to the
assumptions that the sources are stationary as well. In this
work, we observe the EEG signals frequency range of 0-45
Hz.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The examples of results of coherence between four spatial
components are presented for generalized Fig. 1, and focal
Fig. 2, seizures. For every pair of EEG segments (baseline -
pre-ictal, baseline - post-ictal, and pre-ictal - post-ictal), the
common spatial patterns were calculated and plotted along
the main diagonal. The intensity of color corresponds to the
distribution of the patterns values over the head surface, and
the range is normalized for four patterns in each case, light
color corresponds to high values.
The plots show coherence spectra for baseline and pre-
ictal common spatial patterns which represent the activity
of cortical sources. This connectivity measure doesnt keep
the information about the direction of functional connectivity,
just estimates the extent to which one class of EEG may be
predicted from another class with the time delay of 256 ms
(64 model order). Moreover, coherence represents the linear
relationships between activation sources of baseline (blue) and
pre-ictal (green) EEG classes.
The common spatial patterns for the cases of focal and
generalized seizure have a different form. For the case of focal
seizures, CSPs are more uniform and concentrated around
the center of the head. Three CSPs have negative values in
the center and positive at the circumference. For generalized
seizures, CSP is non-uniform: first CSP is high in the center
and at the circumference, second CSP has low values at the
circumference and in the area under Fz. Third CSP has low
values in the almost entire right hemisphere and under Fz and
F3 electrodes, and fourth CSP has two high values around F4
and Pz.
Coherence between patterns also differs between two types
of seizures. For focal seizures, the coherence, in general, has
the same values for brain activity during baseline and pre-
ictal periods. There are frequency ranges where the difference

Fig. 2. ”Baseline”–”pre-ictal” coherence between spatial patterns for focal
seizures.
is present, e.g. for first and second pattern, coherence in the
range from 0 to 15 Hz is larger during pre-ictal, while the
coherence between first and last CSPs in the range from 25
to 40 Hz is larger during baseline segment.
For generalized seizures, the coherence during the pre-ictal
period is larger than during the baseline, for all patterns in
the whole frequency range. The most prominent difference
is between third and fourth patterns from 0 to 30 Hz, their
coherence during baseline is approximately three times larger.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
Study of the coherence between common spatial patterns
between EEG segments well before the seizure, pre-ictal, and
post-ictal allow us to understand the connectivity of brain
areas. For further analysis, the study of activations of the CSPs
will be performed, which will shed light on the difference
between activations with time and for various conditions.
Moreover, such measures as partial coherence, partially
directed coherence, generalized partial directed coherence,
directed transfer function, full frequency directed transfer
function, as well as generalized directed transfer function
would we calculated and further analyzed.
Also, the validity of the CSP with respect to the localization
of the epileptic focus should be conducted.
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